I've been thinking about the above.

A few months ago I made disparaging remarks about capitalism and I hashtagged either it or anticapitalism for greater reach. Always be careful what you wish for haha. I summoned a troll—and I know this because before I blocked him I checked his activity and it was almost entirely him popping into hashtag capitalism discussions to extol the virtues of the status quo. He used different phraseology but essentially he was angrily defending the awful way that things are. Why would anyone argue in favor of the status quo?, I wondered. Doesn't that seem weird? He can say and do nothing & he already has it his way! Haha. Nevertheless these guys are so angry and cannot let any criticism stand. His dunk on me was that capitalism was just a description of the economic market and that nothing was preventing people from basing decisions around other values, family, religion, life satisfaction, whatever. Yet isn't is just wild that people are systematically killed for money? That humanity is rapidly sacrificing a livable planet for money? Seems to disprove the notion that people can simply choose whatever value system to accompany or supersede capitalism. My original point that he chimed in on (I can't find it easily since I blocked him our conversation disappeared) was pointing out the obvious, that money is humanity's highest value currently (evidence above) & that if we want to survive we have to change that. And it's not like it's new!  About the only scripture I ever quote is: The love of money is the root of all evil.

Ok so as I said above & now, I believe surviving & thriving depends on replacing money as humanity's highest value. I also think that's super hard. But I have been thinking and there are many steps in the right direction that help A LOT. Capitalist lovers of the status quo are fond of criticizing generous economic safety nets by saying that it would reduce industriousness. Just by saying that they are admitting that for some percentage of humans there is a concept of enough. That many people only work because they have to in order to survive. How many people feel this way? The best method to find out would be to eliminate financial suffering. If the left fights to provide basic living standards for all and that leads to less work that's a beginning towards breaking the power of money. It would likely lead to de-growth. Given a choice of whether to work, how much, & on what, people would strengthen their connections to others. We'd probably see a lot more art. A lot less mass produced products destined for landfills. It certainly can't happen overnight. But I think that we can devalue money by making the basic essentials of life a human right. Sure some people will still hoard and pursue excess. Maybe luxuries would go up in price if everyone had more basic income. The elimination of having to work at crappy jobs would also cause luxury good prices to rise. These are positive effects. Nobody needs luxury goods. I'm fairly convinced that those who pursue them do so to fill the void in their lives where meaning & community ought to be. But I'm not naive enough to think that everyone is going to adopt my values just if poverty were eliminated. I happen to think that many might naturally become more humanist in such a world, but we'll have to see. I'd love to find out. If too many people continue to be avaricious and destructive there are many other policies that could be implemented. Basic minimum income, humane living standards for all, that's the place to start though. I think it would have a powerful multiplier effect to get us closer to many other beneficial goals for humanity.

I say that's the place to start as if it's easy. It's obviously not. But if the US had elected Bernie Sanders, something that once seemed a lot more likely than electing DT, then the country would be further along on this project. Whether he succeeded or failed his policies would have changed the discussion. Obviously that didn't happen and we are farther away than ever from humane policies. And sadly Bernie is too old now. (Btw I was not a Bernie bro. I supported the mainstream Democratic Party candidates for "electability" reasons & it took me far too long to learn that the Dem Party doesn't know anything or have any special skills at getting elected. So I became more radicalized. If we are going to lose we should at least run with a strong, clear message that we aim to help the most people. We might even win!🙃) I hope that more younger people enter politics. Some may have been inspired by Bernie. Others by the anger of living in this hell.

Finally I don't think much will change until more people change. I made a joke elsewhere on fedi recently that I had received a link to a video about anarchy... on the monopoly video site... with tracking codes intact. It's fine to say that we have to go where the people are or that we are free to use their bandwidth against them. I used to stream long, bad content & I enjoyed thinking that I was wasting their money. What I would enjoy more would be being able to afford streaming on my own. This paragraph-long diversion is to say that if the US & world were further along towards demanding human rights more people would be on fedi than corporate platforms. I don't think the people are with us. That bothers me the most. But I think a good number are open to humanist values. They haven't seen them advocated. So yeah that's an argument for being on YouTokGramBook but only to entice people off. It's a mistake to build income streams dependent on pro-fascism corporations. That's corrupting. You go on hell sites for visibility. You build movements off hell sites.

Ramble over.
For now.